Spilt Milk

Yesterday Penny went to full-time day care for the first time.  When my husband picked her up she had just finished a bottle and the teacher offered to rinse it for him.  ‘Noooooooo,’ he declared, in slo-mo as he grabbed the bottle and saved the ½ oz of remaining milk from certain destruction. Apparently, the other infants drink formula, so the teacher didn’t really get it.

More infuriating is the frequent conversation other mothers have with me about milk: their ‘freezer full of milk’ they had to throw away once their child weaned. Apparently, everyone is swimming in the stuff like Mickey in the Night Kitchen. Except around here.

In my household, breast milk is worth its weight in saffron.

On days I’m not with her all day, I spend hours a day pumping milk in hopes of barely keeping up with Penny’s appetite. In fact, I’m pumping right now and hen-pecking one-handed on the keyboard.  Even if I’m with her for the day I get up before 6am so I can pump, just to stash enough to get through the week. There have been weeks (plural!) when I’ve set an extra alarm for 3am so I can get an extra pumping session in.  And yes, I’ve even been crouched on the kitchen floor in hysterical tears over a dropped and very spilt bag of milk.

It’s hard on me to insist on breast milk for her, and not always know where her next meal is coming from. We’re pretty much living boob to pump to mouth, and it keeps me up at night.

Sure, the great milk shortage of 2010 was instigated by my business trip, and, OK, I’m a little compulsive about sticking with breast milk.  So basically, a big piece of this problem is fanatically devotion to do what might be best for Penny, but it’s not entirely unwarranted.  The one time I convinced myself that plenty of babies have formula and turn out fine (myself included) and agreed to formula being incorporated into her diet when she visited my in-laws without me (necessity was a factor in this decision) she got horrible diarrhea and her bum was glowing red and painful for a week.  So there! Take that voice of reason, trying to lull me into complacency. She won’t be OK without breast milk.

Rationally, of course, I know that’s just not true. We can use a different formula and she’d probably be fine. But for now, please, no dumping out my liquid gold and no bragging casually about your Breyer’s-factory-sized frozen milk repository. It just makes me want to cry.